John Thomas Holiday Jr. (born March 31, 1985) is an American operatic countertenor. His repertoire focuses on the Baroque and contemporary composers, including staged opera and opera in concert, works for voice and orchestra, and experimental mixed-media. He has participated in several world premieres. He has performed with several opera companies in the United States, toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and sung in Shanghai and several European cities. He also sings gospel, pop, and jazz; he was a contestant on season 19 of NBC's The Voice, a vocal competition television series.
Early life
Holiday was born in 1985 in the city of Rosenberg, Greater Houston, in Fort Bend County, Texas, to John Holiday, Sr, a welder and Waverly A. Holiday a homemaker who sang and played clarinet. His maternal grandmother, Sandra Mathis Franklin, was the pianist and music director at Missionary Baptist Church. He taught himself to play piano by imitating her, and later the organ. While only 6 or 7 years old he sang solos in church and at Travis Elementary School. He won a spot in the Fort Bend Boys Choir, which led to appearances as a treble soloist in the Houston Symphony's performances of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust with Denyce Graves in the role of Marguérite. He later said: "I’d never seen anyone who looked like me doing what she did. I’d never thought of being an opera singer. To tell the truth, I didn’t know that world even existed. I decided that was what I wanted to do."[1]
He studied at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2003 to 2007, earning a bachelor of music degree in vocal performance.[4] While a student at SMU, he won first place at the TEXOMA region of the National Association of Teachers of Singing several times. Though SMU presented few performance opportunities for a countertenor, in 2005 he did sing the role of Gherardino in the school's production of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. He won the Concerto Competition of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts in 2007.
He spent the academic year 2007–2008 studying voice at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. He then returned to Rosenberg and taught Choral Music and Voice at Lamar Junior High School and Lamar Consolidated High School from August 2008 to December 2009. He returned to vocal studies, now at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where he earned a master's degree in vocal performance in 2012. There he performed the role of Tolomeo in Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto under conductor Mark Gibson. In May 2011, he took first place in the Dallas Opera Guild Competition.[5] He spent the summer of that year with the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice program for singers.[6]
He next enrolled at Juilliard, studied with Marlena Malas and Stephen Wadsworth, and obtained his Artist Diploma in Opera Studies in 2014.
In 2015, he originated the role of Male Soloist No. 1 in the world premiere of Huang Ruo's Paradise Interrupted at the Spoleto Festival USA,[14] a role he repeated in New York at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016[15] and in Shanghai for the Art Macau Festival.[16]
In February 2020 he sang in the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice at the Los Angeles Opera.[23] He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in that opera in December 2021.[24][25]
Though the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of many of his scheduled performances, his recital at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was presented as a virtual concert. Holiday combined Italian baroque arias with works by Black composers in conjunction with the museum's exhibit of paintings by Jacob Lawrence called "The American Struggle".[26]
In November 2022 he sang the roles of Man Under the Arch and Hotel Clerk in the world stage premiere of Kevin Puts's The Hours at the Metropolitan Opera.[27]
Holiday has performed jazz and gospel music throughout his career. In 2006, he opened for Grammy award winner Jason Mraz at the McFarlon Auditorium in Dallas.[29] He released a jazz album entitled "The Holiday Guide" that year as well.
In October 2020, he auditioned successfully for a contestant's spot on NBC's The Voice, where he was coached by John Legend.[30] He came in fifth place in the final.
He has released 3 pop singles, “Alive in Me”, “Waste Mine”, and “Love Finds a Way”, the latter also receiving a remix by Houston-based DJ Riddler. All songs were produced by Rob Grimaldi, best known for co-writing and co-producing the BTS song “Butter”.
Personal life
Holiday has identified as gay since he was a teenager.[31] On February 4, 2013, he married his husband, Paul Gater.[1] As of 2021, he is divorced from Gater. He got engaged to fellow The Voice contestant Rio Souma (real name DeMario Adams) in the summer of 2021, and married on July 30, 2022. The couple currently live in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was represented by Columbia Artists Management[32] until 2018. He has been represented since that time by Fletcher Artist Management.[33] March 31 has been named "John Holiday Day" in Fort Bend County, Texas.[34]
He is the second cousin of the former Vice President of Major League Baseball Jimmie Lee Solomon.
^Shengold, David (September 2017). "We Shall Not Be Moved". Opera News. 82 (3). Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
